Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page hacked

NEW YORK: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's account was hacked by a security researcher Khalil Shreateh after the social network ignored his warnings that a glitch in the site allowed anyone to post on a stranger's wall.

Shreateh, a security researcher from Palestine, had discovered a dangerous glitch in the privacy sector of the social networking website, which he had reported under the Bug Bounty Programme. But, his warnings were ignored by Facebook.

Shreateh hacked the Facebook timeline of the CEO by breaking the rules and posting on Zuckerbergs's wall.

He also apologised to Zuckerberg for breaking into his account.

Shreateh said on Zuckerberg's wall: "First sorry for breaking your privacy and post to your wall, I has no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to the Facebook Team. My name is Khalil, from Palestine (sic)."

Following the intrusion, Facebook contacted Shreateh to know how he had been able to hack Zuckerberg's page and fixed the bug.

But the security researcher will not receive the bounty fee as the methods used by him violates the terms of service of the site.

Facebook started the Bug Bounty programme a little more than two years ago to reward security researchers who report issues and to encourage people to help keep the site safe and secure.

While bugs can cause software to crash or produce unexpected results, certain defects can be used to gain unauthorised access to systems.